2017 Goals and Progress

Sorry for the very slow posts and updates. Just to keep anyone reading in the loop my fiance and I have been in the process of doing minor renovations to a small house and are moving to another city. So everything is mostly packed and things are just generally crazy and stressful. Plus I don’t like the fact that I can’t cook since my kitchen is packed away.

Don’t get me wrong I love fast food, but I feel really slow and tired after I eat it. Many places in my area don’t have a lot of healthy options and the ones that do are a bit pricey or not even that tasty. Anyway, onto my goals and progress.

Just to recap my goals:

Lose weight (20 pounds)

Read more (1 book per month minimum)

Save money ($25 to savings every month)

Write more (100-500 words a day/1 blog post a week min.)

Losing Weight

While I have been trying to keep my calories under control and persistent in working out at least 3 times a week, a few things have set me back. The current one being that I can’t cook my own food right now which makes things a little difficult. Another was a hit to my self esteem; I only had a scale that was about 10+ years old wasn’t very consistent. I tested this with a 10 lbs medicine ball for a week and everyday it was off either by 1 to 2 pounds. So my fiance bought a new, smart, scale…it seems that old scale is off a few pounds depending on how much is actually on it. It was off SEVEN POUNDS. It doesn’t seem like much but I though I was close to hitting the halfway point. Maybe I was but still for a few days I just wanted to give up.

But I’ve bounced back, again thanks to my fiance and my wonderful best friends who gave me wonderful advice and pushed me to keep going. I’m slowly getting back to where I thought I was before and while I can’t get much of a chance to do a full workout I have a challenge every month to do. This month it’s burpees, and by the end of this month I’m going to do 100 burpees (5 sessions of 20 burpees with a minute or two break in between).

I have thought about revising my goal, I might do that in June or July. I’m happy with how I look, it’s more being within a healthy weight range for my height as I’m teetering on the edge and I’d prefer to be closer to the middle or lower end of that spectrum.

Read 1 Book a Month

This one I have kept up with a lot better than anything I think. I posted the list here and this is what I’ve read so far:

Alice in Wonderland

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Animal Farm

Jurassic Park

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The Wendigo

The last two are the ones that were not on my original list, I read those as filler if I finished the book I was on early. Why did I do this? Because after reading Alice I thought ‘Hey, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is pretty big, I should get a head start so I can finish it by the end of February.’ I finished that book in 3 days. While I’m proud of myself, since I haven’t finished a large book in that amount of time since I was reading the Harry Potter series I felt I needed some filler books so that 1: I can pace myself with my list and really have 1 book a month, and 2: I can add more book to my ‘Have Read’ list.

Save Money

This one is another one that I’ve kept up with, mostly thanks to automatic transfers. Now I can slowly build up my savings so I don’t have to worry too much about emergencies in the future. I’m not there yet but at least I’m taking steps to get there. And if you’re thinking of doing the same, it doesn’t have to be $25 a month, it can be whatever you want. $5, or $50 whatever you’re comfortable with. As long as you put it in there and most importantly DON’T TOUCH IT. Why? Think of it as emergency money, and I don’t mean a shopping emergency, I mean job loss and you need rent money or a medical emergency, something like that.

A lot of people I know don’t have a saving account and I highly recommend getting one, most are free if you have add money to it every month or if you have a certain amount in the account. I’m not financial adviser but I’m pretty sure a saving account can help in the long run.

Write More

Alright here is the only area where I am really struggling. Obviously I haven’t kept up with posting here, but there a few 100-300 word stories that I have written. I just never post them since I don’t think they’re ready. Maybe they are and I’m just being super critical, still I do need to make more improvements to writing every day. That’s the only way I or anyone else can get better. I want to say ‘no excuses, everyday’ but I’m sure you can guess that I will find ways to excuse myself even though I shouldn’t.

So there’s my update on getting closer to my goals as well as what’s currently going on. Hopefully things will settle down enough so I can make a routine and keep posting. I hope your days stay positive and you get closer to your own goals. Good luck and have a wonderful day.